Recently I acquired an original Barney Stein photo of the 1947 Brooklyn Borough Hall welcome of the Dodgers. The photo appealed to me because it was taken by Stein (the official photographer of the Brooklyn Dodgers) and actually featured his own annotations for the camera and settings. It also is a wonderful contextual reference for one of my favorite Brooklyn Dodger items; my 1947 Welcome National League Champions Banner.
One of the things I have been fascinated with over the years is both how rare these are and how they have been described. These banners (1947-1956) have been offered in various auctions over the years, but in many instances, it appears that what we are seeing has been just the same banners being offered over and over again. I know of one long time dealer who described them as being “hung from light posts” throughout Brooklyn to honor the Dodgers. This description suggests they were fairly common items. Period images don’t support this and neither does my data on the individual offerings from year to year. In culling old auction data, I tried to determine the a likely surviving population by identifying examples that were sold more than once. Many of these banners have unique condition characteristics that enable them to be distinguished from other offerings in a given year (stains, writing, tears, autographs, etc). From what I have been able to gather, there appear to have been thirteen (13) of these banners from all years that have survived and offered publicly.
1947: 3
1949: 3 (I have also seen one example of a smaller 30” square version)
1952: 1
1953: 1
1955: 4
1956: 1
13 is a much smaller number than the approximately 27 times I have seen these various banners offered for sale publicly. I offer this information not to pump up the price of my banner (it is NOT for sale), but to highlight something that is sorely missing in many facets of the memorabilia market, and that is true market analysis. Being able to look through catalogs or various on-line sites for “prices realized” is nice to do, but that is not “market analysis.” Unless you study this data, you risk getting a false read on what is likely a more accurate number and this has an impact on pricing as folks tend to look at only what “the last one sold for.” When the same items are frequently offered and resold, prices realized tend to stay steady and have a tendency to stagnate as there is the notion that these are not rare as I see them all the time.
In addition to this, market analysis needs to include some sense about potential availability. Brooklyn Dodger “Super Collector” Gary Cypres has the only complete collection of these banners that I know of. Gary remarked in article that appeared on line through ESPN on 11 October, 2015 "I'm going to put the Dodger collection in a trust," he said.
"The Dodger collection cannot be replaced. There are no duplicates of what I have. Gloves, balls and bats can be replaced, but the history of a franchise which took me 25 years to assemble, that's impossible to replace. That's a treasure, and I don't want my kids to blow the treasure. It's my love, and even after death, I'm going to be looking down saying, 'No, no, no,' if they want to get rid of it. You can't do that. It's history, and that means something to me." What this tells me that for each year (1947,1949,1952,1953,1955, and 1956), you should probably reduce the population of potentially available Brooklyn Dodger Welcome banners by one per year as it does not seem likely to plan on acquiring one or all from this collection, or not at least anytime soon.
Long way around the barn on this one, but for me, market analysis does not equal prices realized. Market Analysis is:
-Knowing and Understanding what the artifact actually is.
-Knowing and Understanding the known or likely population.
-Knowing and Understanding the known or likely available population.
You then take this data and look at prices realized and make a value assessment as to if the item in question is under or overvalued based on likely or anticipated collector interest or demand.
Dave Grob
davegrob1@aol.com